Otto P. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Otto P, who was born in Trnava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1923, the youngest of five children. He recounts attending Jewish and public schools; participating in Maccabi; German occupation and Slovak independence; anti-Jewish restrictions and harassment; deportation to a labor camp; escape; returning home; his father arranging for him to work nearby; deportation with his father and brothers to Sered in 1942; separation from one brother (he never saw him again); deportation with his father and brother to Auschwitz/Birkenau; kapos beating prisoners to death; his father's death after two weeks; transfer to a quarry; locating his brother (he died shortly thereafter); receiving extra food from a Sonderkommando; attending a construction school; transfer to Harmęże, then Budy; a prisoner doctor saving his life when he had an infection; transfer back to Auschwitz; a woman from his town arranging a privileged job driving a delivery wagon; a kapo giving him extra food; trading goods with civilians; observing the Sonderkommando uprising; a death march in January 1945 to Karlovy Vary (he rode on a wagon), then a camp near Dresden; posing as a Czech political prisoner; a mass shooting of 200 prisoners; burying the bodies; transfer to Litoměřice via Ústí nad Labem; a Polish prisoner threatening to expose him as Jew; another Pole killing the one who threatened to expose him; train transfer; escape; hiding with a partisan; translating for them (the partisans were killing all the SS they found); returning to Trnava; moving to Bratislava; traveling to Vienna, then Port-de-Bouc; illegal emigration to Palestine; interdiction by the British; being wounded; incarceration in ʻAtlit; visits from his brother; a hunger strike; his release; military draft; marriage; and the births of two children.

11 videocassettes